


a kingdom or a cottage or a grave

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 21:51:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>It doesn't matter where you're born. What matters is who you become.</i>
</p><p>Peggy Carter as the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a kingdom or a cottage or a grave

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so tumblr gave me a lot of Winter Soldier Peggy feels, and clearly I have no impulse control.
> 
>  **warnings** : torture, graphic descriptions of violent murder, past sexual abuse.

You're born Margaret Carter, in London 1916. Your parents send you to a public school. You go to university. MI6 recruits you there.

You're born Margarita Alexeeva Zimova, in Krasnoyarsk 1916. You have no parents; the state takes care of you, just another war orphan.

There is a world where you join MI6, and act as liaison to the Strategic Scientific Reserve, and even in a bloody, vicious war you find a reason to believe. There is a world where you get on NKVD's radar, and that's how the Red Room finds you, and they give you a reason. There is a world where both these realities are true, but truth is relative.

It doesn't matter where you're born. What matters is who you become.

~

You know that some of your memories are fake, the same way you know how to swear in colourful Cockney slang despite no one ever teaching you. You know how to kill a man with your bare hands, and you know how to snipe a butterfly in a snowstorm, and you reassemble rifles one-handed with your eyes closed; this you know, in your bones, more intimately than the memories you have of London, of Krasnoyarsk.

You know how to lie, you know how to kill, and you know loyalty. You don't know yourself very well, not at all, but these three things tell you more than enough.

This you know: one soldier, in the right place at the right time, can sway tides. You are the soldier. You're steadfast, and you're loyal, and so the codename they give you is the Winter Soldier. The coldest of killers, the perfect assassin, brought in from the cold for one purpose only: to sway tides. Face to face, they call you Lieutenant; the insignia on your shoulders match the title, though sometimes you think they address you like this because your codename can be awkward in a conversation. But when they think you can't hear them, when they think you're too busy with target practice to follow conversations around you, this is what they call you: _Bezdomnaya_.

Homeless.

~

Coming out of the cryostasis chamber feels like dying and being born, over and over. They blindfold you to shield your eyes from the too-harsh light, and gentle hands help you up, and there is a voice in your ear murmuring, 'It's okay, it's okay, it'll be all right, here we go.' You take tentative steps like a newborn pony, like you're learning to walk all over again. You're naked, but no one dares touch you in an untoward way, even though all the scientists and handlers are men.

For the next day you're shaking, your hands and feet tingling uncomfortably as your body temperature slowly adjusts. You're touchy. They know better than to approach you, after the time a scientist talks too loud around you and without thinking, your body reacting without engaging your mind, you smash both his kneecaps and when he falls, screaming, you snap his neck.

That time, you're punished.

But since then they know you're volatile, right after you wake up, and so they treat you well. They let you flex your left arm, slow and hyperfocused, relearning the pull of artificial muscles. They let you sleep, and after two days the mental implantation during sensory deprivation starts, and you remember who you are, you remember who you're loyal to. You remember your reasons; you believe.

You never ask what year it is, what day or month. It doesn't matter.

~

A US Army Colonel, decorated war hero and veteran of the SSR, collaborates with SHIELD in training deep cover agents. According to intelligence, cadets are being taught Russian. To Moscow Centre, this is unacceptable. An order is given. The Red Room dispatches its best operative.

The Red Room dispatches you.

~

You set up in the building opposite SHIELD headquarters in Times Square, two floors above Phillips' office, and assemble your rifle. They gave you an infrared rangefinder scope, and the small logo on the side seems familiar, but you don't know what SI stands for.

You watch Phillips come into the office at 0900, answer calls and fill out reports, leave for thirty minutes to eat lunch with an enthusiastic, fresh-faced operative intelligence identifies as one Nicholas Joseph Fury. You watch Phillips fill out paperwork, growl at four agents who stand at attention and nod in terror and then they're dismissed. You watch Phillips throw paper balls at the rubbish bin on the other end of the room and miss two times out of ten. You watch him take a nap on the ratty couch in his office for one hour, before a call wakes him up and he barks orders into the receiver, looking like he wants to throw it across the room. You watch him fill out paperwork and delegate a third of it downstairs when it seems like it was mailed to the wrong department.

You watch Colonel Phillips live out the last hours of his sixty-four-year-old life, irrelevant and dull as they are.

At 1800, you put on a pair of leather gloves. Your left arm has no fingerprints, but you like the symmetry. You pick the bullet at random and load it; they're all the same, armour-piercing rounds you find both reliable and versatile. You close your eyes and feel the wind, its direction and speed. You lie down, the rifle pressed against your cheek, and adjust the angle by eight degrees.

Phillips leans back in his chair, and heaves a tired sigh. He closes his eyes.

You exhale.

The glass window doesn't shatter, but a spiderweb of cracks forms around the hole left by the bullet. Phillips is thrown back, his head cocked upwards from the force of the shot. The entrance wound, right between the eyes, is small; a single trickle of blood rolls down his right cheek. It's invisible from this angle, but you know how the exit wound looks like. Blood, brain matter and skull shards are splattered across the wall, and gravity starts pulling them down in messy trails. After a few seconds, Phillips' head tips back down, chin to collarbone, and the back of his head is visible: half of the skull is gone, one open wound.

From your vantage point you can't see where the bullet is lodged in the wall, but that doesn't matter. You pick yourself up, disassemble the rifle and pack everything into a shoulder bag. Over your civilian clothes you put on a brown trench coat. You take the bag and leave the building before SHIELD can track the trajectory and send in a team.

You walk to Grand Central Station and take a train out of New York. You watch the landscape as it passes by, your hand curled protectively around the handle of your bag; you're alone in the compartment and you stretch your legs on the seat opposite. You watch the landscape as it passes by, and you feel nothing.

~

When you're following your handler to the briefing room, you pass the training areas, and even though you don't know it yet this is how you meet Natalia Romanova for the first time.

There are five girls, sixteen at most, bony-kneed and underfed, standing at attention. An old drill instructor is giving them an inspiring speech about serving their country, about loyalty and the imperialist threat.

One of the girls catches your eye, and you turn your head to look at her. You don't stop, and she has to turn as well to keep eye contact. Her hair is red, and even from here you can tell her eyes are green. Green and fierce and cold at the same time, and she recognises you: she takes in a surprised breath, because it is not often that a low-level operative gets to see the Winter Soldier.

You keep watching her until the handler turns a corner and you follow him, and from a distance you can hear the drill instructor growl: 'Look at me when I'm talking to you, soldier,' and there's a crack and a soft gasp.

In the briefing room you give your report, and that's where the memory ends.

~

When you wake up again, cold and naked and shaking, one of the scientists is humming a tune under his breath.

Your teeth are chattering and you can barely stand, but you force yourself to swallow around the bile in your throat and ask, 'What is it that you sing?'

It's only after you're done that you realise the question left your mouth in English, and you brace yourself for punishment. It doesn't come.

The scientist gives you a wide smile and says, in Russian, ' _Sleeping Beauty_ , we got tickets to the Bolshoi for my daughter's birthday. Don't they teach you the important stuff?'

They let you sleep, and the next day the same scientist brings a gramophone and a vinyl record; he plays the entire ballet, nodding along, while you flex your left arm, relearning the pull of artificial muscles. You memorise the music; it's beautiful and lonely.

~

Your handler gives you a thick folder. You open it and skim the pages, but you're a fast reader, it all sinks in. Gabriel Jones. Another American, another soldier, this one a skilled translator. Suspected of cracking the code used by Soviet agents on US soil. Moscow Centre needs to know how much truth there is in the reports. An order is given.

They bring you out of the cold.

~

They bring you out of the cold and you follow your handler to the training area, where two young women are sparring. They don't pay attention to you and your handler, too preoccupied with keeping their eyes on their opponent and nothing else. One has short red hair, the other a blonde ponytail. You lift your eyebrow, but your handler says nothing, so you watch the fight.

Finally the redhead manages to get in a high roundhouse kick; there is a hollow crack as the blonde's jaw breaks, and she falls to the ground with a pained moan. The redhead stands over her, feet wide apart and hands fisted at her sides, breathing hard.

'Enough,' your handler says, and the girl turns. You don't think you've seen her before; her eyes are cold and fierce, and they go a little wider when she sees you. Your handler nods at you, a humourless smirk tugging at his mouth. 'She's all yours.'

You walk up to the girl, and wait until the blonde picks herself off the floor before you look her in the eye. 'What's your name, soldier?'

She lifts her chin. 'Natalia Alianovna Romanova.'

'Do you think you're good, Natalia Alianovna?'

You can see the way she tightens her fists, but her face remains blank, her spine ramrod-straight. 'Yes,' she says, 'since you're here, Comrade Winter Soldier.'

She's clever. That's good; you despise dull people. But smarts only go so far, so you strike out, fast. She blocks before you can break her collarbone, and handsprings back. You catch her with your left arm, right to the solar plexus, and she staggers back, coughing. You don't wait, just go after her again, this time with a kick that will break her ribs if it connects — but it doesn't, she knocks your aim off, and tries to breathe.

You don't let it go on too long, this isn't a real spar. She dodges and blocks and when she does take blows, she moves with them and doesn't let the pain slow her down; and you know she must be in a lot of pain, by now. Finally you deliver a hard kick to her side, and she falls, clutching her ribs. You don't wait, just pull your gun out of its holster and aim between her eyes. Your hand is still.

She looks back, unblinking, and there is something exhilarating, something free about the way her eyes are wide and bright and fearless.

The gun still trained on her, you ask: 'Why did you defend yourself?'

'I didn't know I wasn't supposed to.'

You smile, although perhaps it isn't a nice smile. She's all yours.

~

Before the mission, you have to teach Natalia to speak with an accent; her _r_ 's are too hard and her vowels not rounded enough, but she learns in three weeks. The two of you practise on English translations of _Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism_ and _Anna Karenina_ , between hours spent in a sub-level of the Red Room facility, where shots fired won't disturb anyone.

You leave Natalia bleeding, beaten, crying in helpless fury but still forcing herself to stand and fight you; you leave her with vicious bruises all over her body, and when she throws up you hold her hair and stroke the back of her neck. You help her up and she leans heavily on you, and she doesn't blink when you tell her to take off her shirt so you can tape her ribs.

She says she's twenty-three years old, born exactly ten years before the Battle of Stalingrad, but she looks not a day over sixteen. She says they give her injections, meant to make her heal faster and age slower.

She looks at you with wonder and dread: she never knew women could be so strong, so ruthless. She's young enough that she wants to trust, still, but broken enough that she doesn't let that trust cloud her judgement. You're not sure how to feel about her faith in you. She says all the tales she heard about the Winter Soldier talked about a man, a brave young soldier out of his time. She says she's glad that's not true, because it gives her a reason to believe.

You give her a reason to believe.

~

Gabriel Jones has an apartment in Brooklyn, which he shares with his fiancee and their labrador puppy. You climb the fire escape and come in through the window, you and Natasha. You're both wearing black uniforms and leather gloves. You holster your guns at your thighs; Natasha prefers her lower back, because she likes using her legs in a fight.

Without being prompted, she makes her way to Jones' office and you can hear her going through the drawers of his desk. She knows what to look for, and she knows where to look for it. You leave her to it and take care of the dog.

Fifteen minutes later, just as you expect, Jones' fiancee walks through the door. You don't give her a chance to raise an alarm; you grab her from the back, one forearm around her throat, and snap her neck before she can even make a noise. You drag the body to the bathroom and deposit it in the tub.

You sit at the table, facing the front door, and wait.

Nearly an hour later Jones comes in. It's late afternoon, the apartment full of shadows, but his eyes fall on you immediately and he reaches for a gun. You're faster, though, and he freezes.

'Peggy Carter?'

His voice doesn't shake, but the emotion is clear in it. You know you carry a passing resemblance to an MI6 agent who used to supervise the black ops team Jones was on, during the war. But that woman would be a lot older than you are, if she hadn't died, tragically, in a car accident.

When you say nothing, his eyes narrow. 'What the hell do you want?'

'Answers,' you say.

Before he can answer, Natasha appears in the doorway to the right, and in a flash of movement her boot connects with the back of Jones' neck and he drops to the ground, unconscious. You help Natasha lift him up and tie him to a chair, and she brings in a bag from the next room, takes out knife after knife and lays them on the table so Jones will have a good view. She gags him, and when you nod she gets a glass of water from the kitchen and throws it in his face.

He wakes up slowly, and you can see his arms flex as he tries to fight the bonds. You lean over him.

'Mr Jones. They call me the Winter Soldier.' At this, his eyes go very wide. You go on: 'I'm here on behalf of Moscow Centre. In twenty minutes, I'll let you speak. Try not to pass out until then, _ponimayesh_?'

He shuts his eyes and turns away, and you take the first knife from the left.

~

It takes three twenty-minute rounds.

~

Natasha watches you like a hawk, unmoving, expression blank. She doesn't blink when Jones screams, and when you're done you put the knife in her hand and you tell her to finish it.

She takes a position behind Jones, puts a hand on his forehead to tilt his head back. He goes willingly, too exhausted and delirious to put up a fight. Natasha cuts his throat in one fluid movement, and holds on until the blood stops flowing.

You take her to the bathroom, where the fiancee's body stares at you both with wide open eyes, and you wash her hands; you wash her face and her hair, until the water runs clear.

And she looks at you, eyes bright and cold and fierce; she looks at you, water caught on her eyelashes, running down her neck; she looks at you, wet hair sticking to her temples; she looks at you, and then she puts her hand at the back of your neck and pulls you closer until she can press her mouth to yours.

~

Fifteen minutes later you leave Jones' apartment, knives packed along with all the documents Natasha could find in his office. There is a brown paper bag filled with civilian clothes waiting for you in a dumpster in a back alley, so you dress like civilians and walk to the metro station. It starts snowing. It isn't that cold, but you still dislike it, it reminds you too much of the cryostasis chamber and — and something else, something more. There is a vague, hazy memory at the edges of your consciousness. Driving fast, and freezing wind in your hair. It's less than a memory. A muscle reflex.

You take the metro to Manhattan; it's easy to navigate compared to the London Tube. (You think.) Natasha takes your hand and twines your fingers with hers, and looks away when you turn to her. She doesn't let go when you get off the train, and all the way to Pennsylvania Station. She buys the tickets; you watch her back, and then you let her take your hand again and lead you to the waiting train. People don't look twice at you. You're nothing alike, but they must think you're sisters or best friends. Is it socially acceptable for two young women to hold hands in public? You have no way of remembering.

You take a train out of New York, and watch the landscape as it passes by. You're alone in the compartment, so you stretch your legs on the seat opposite. Natasha pulls her knees up to her chest and curls around you, and takes your hand again and holds it pressed to her abdomen, when you can feel her breathing. She puts her head on your shoulder.

'They're going to put you in stasis now,' she says, quiet, 'aren't they?'

It takes you a moment to realise she's speaking English. Her accent is perfect.

You let yourself relax into her, into the warmth of her body. You watch the landscape as it passes by. You say, 'Most likely. Does it bother you?'

There's silence, and then Natasha's fingers around yours tighten. 'The formation of emotional attachments is detrimental to the overall efficacy of the mission.'

'That doesn't answer my question.'

Natasha doesn't reply, until: 'I was just a little girl during the Battle of Stalingrad. Everyone was starving, and there were so many soldiers in the city. I didn't have a home, and a few of them took care of me, like a pet. They gave me their rations, and they let me drink some of the cow blood they boiled. I thought they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. I didn't know they'd want me to pay.'

'Did you?' you ask.

'I survived,' says Natasha, and that's as far as the conversation goes.

Her breathing evens out eventually, and she sleeps through the whole night. Killing a man can take a lot out of a person. You know this was Natasha's first mission on foreign soil, and you wonder if this was her first kill as well. You wonder what her attachment to you means — no. You know what it means. You beat her and broke her to make her stronger, and now you two share more than just the blood on your hands. Natasha may belong to the Red Room, just like you do, but she's all yours.

You watch the landscape as it passes by, and you smile.

~

They don't put you in stasis. The unspoken is: as long as you don't start pushing, as long as you don't resist the conditioning, you're free. But you're too valuable as an operative, so they give you a series of injections. Your left arm is scheduled for maintenance every month, and you pretend you don't know they program a series of kill switches into it.

You don't ask Natasha what she did in exchange for this. She doesn't volunteer the information.

~

Planes and airports are an unnecessary risk, so once Control has you dropped off in Toronto, the two of you take the long way to Brazil. Your passports identify you as Natalie and Margaret Rushman, London natives; one travelling the world in her gap year and the other accompanying her as part of her older sister duties. Natasha dyes her hair dark, to match yours. You're built differently, but you can cover that up with sweaters and scarves and trousers that easily hide your weapons.

Natasha is good at undercover work; while you roll your eyes and frown at strangers, she laughs and makes friends with everyone you meet. You hitchhike to the US with a group of strangers, who all talk about peace and America's unjust wars. They know very little about actual politics, about the real world, and you see how disgusted Natasha is by their ignorance. They don't know a single thing about war.

You lose them somewhere in Texas, and cross the border on your own. It makes you wonder; your handlers could have you flown to Cuba, couldn't they? It would certainly save time.

But you know this is a test. Everything is a test. Loyalty can never be proven, it's a process.

So you hitchhike your way across two Americas, and take turns sleeping, except for when you stay in motels. When you stay in motels, Natasha crawls into your bed or into the shower, and puts her mouth on you, puts her hands on you. You rock against each other, and you swallow your own moans when Natasha presses her fingers inside you; you do the same for her, and once you know how this should go you do more than that, you drop to your knees or shimmy down the bed until you're between her legs, and you make her scream, make her shake apart with your tongue and little else.

She's all yours.

~

You make it to São Paulo with time to spare, and then it's time to split up. Natasha becomes Natalie Rushman, who doesn't have a sister, who is rich and bored and talented at poker.

You stop existing. You don't need a cover identity; you won't be getting close to the targets.

And there are three targets, although collateral brings the number to eighty-two.

~

The night of the operation, you see Natasha for the first time in two weeks. You've been doing the leg work while she insinuated herself into the inner circle of the men who organise the big game, all the main players. She'll be extracting information. You're only here to make sure that information doesn't leave São Paulo.

You see Natasha for the first time in two weeks, and you understand why they chose to call her the Black Widow.

She's dyed her hair again, a dark auburn that makes her eyes bright and cold, and her lips are red. That's the only colour; she's dressed in all black, a long dress barely hanging on her shoulders and open on her back, her eyes rimmed with charcoal grey. Her mouth is stretched in a smirk, because she knows how stunning she is.

And she's the most beautiful person you've seen, or remember seeing, and something inside you twists painfully when you realise this is what love must feel like. You want her, always, because she's yours; but you've never wanted her like this, weak and aching and desperate. This is what she does to you. She makes you weak. It's unacceptable, it's behaviour that should land you in the darkest basement of the Red Room facility, and the worst is — the worst is that you won't tell a soul, under torture or threat of death, because you want this moment to last forever.

When she sees the way you're looking at her, her smile becomes a real one. 'You didn't teach me _everything_ , you know.'

'How long until the game starts?' you ask, already moving towards her. You don't hear the answer, because you're busy slipping her dress off her shoulders, pressing your mouth to her collarbone. She makes a noise at the back of her throat, low and hoarse, and helps you, and her fingers scramble to get your uniform unbuckled.

She lets you fuck her then and there on the floor of a decrepit safehouse, your fingers inside her and your thumb on her clit, pressing too hard. You don't care, not with her thigh between your legs, not with her tongue between your lips.

And you wish you had a name, a real name, just so you could hear her shout it.

~

You help Natasha put on her makeup, afterwards. She's straddling your thighs and you lean back against the bed, and you paint her lips the colour of arterial blood. Her elbows rest on your shoulders, and she watches you. She traces the line of your jaw with her fingertips, then your mouth.

'Come with me to the game,' she says, and it makes you smile.

'I can't exactly pass as your rich date,' you reply. 'Too much chest, too little between the legs. I'm quite certain it would be frowned upon.'

'And you're all about appearances, Comrade Winter Soldier?'

You say nothing. She slips on her dress, puts on her high heels, and before she's gone she turns to you and raises her eyebrows. 'How do I look?'

You let your smile go lopsided, and think: _I would kill for you_. You aren't sure what your face betrays.

But, 'Good,' Natasha says. 

After she's gone, you sit on the edge of the bed — unused, the sheets still in perfect order — and rake your fingers through your hair, trying to think. There is a vague memory, at the edges of your consciousness, of a red dress; you've never seen Natasha wear red, which means it must have been yours. You remember… No, that's not right. It's not a memory, it's muscle reflex, a feeling. Walking into a room and owning it, and there was no rifle hung over your shoulder.

But what kind of person becomes the Winter Soldier? You know how to kill, you know how to lie, and you know loyalty.

With a frustrated growl you get off the bed and put on your uniform and go to work.

~

By the time newspapers all over the world run the story of eighty-two rich people found dead in a luxurious casino, all victims of tetrodotoxin poisoning, you and Natasha are already waiting for pickup in Montevideo. Her hair is blonde this time, and for two weeks it feels like freedom. You barely leave the bed, and when you do it's to drive fast cars and drink and cheat at cards.

This is what you want to remember: Natasha smiling down at you, smoothing your hair with her fingers, kissing you like there's all the time in the world. The smell of salty water on your skin. Sparring with her at night, pinning her arms over her head and making her beg.

This is what you want to remember: what it's like to feel something, anything.

~

In 1992, a long-time friend to the Red Room puts himself in a position to take charge of a corporation specialising in advanced weapon and defence technologies. Moscow Centre has been split into internal and external intelligence and security agencies, and the Berlin Wall has fallen, but the Red Room remains. Was the CIA decommissioned just because the Cold War ended? And so an order is given.

The Red Room dispatches its best operatives.

~

The mission is simple. Natasha gets close to the driver, and after she brings him to you, you use the newest generation of mental conditioning methods to reprogram him. Everything goes according to plan, because it always does. The man, at precisely 1342 when he's driving Howard and Maria Stark from their New York mansion to a charity ball in the Bronx, will snap. He will remember his directives. He thinks Natasha will be there to save him from the crash, because he has known Natasha all his life: he and Natalie Rushman have been in love for years, both of them covert spies.

The conditioning methods the Red Room taught you have proven effective time and again. You find the solution quite tidy. There is little room for error.

~

There is little room for error, but when people around you are screaming and, dressed as a paramedic, you walk over to the upturned car to make sure everyone is dead, Howard Stark looks at you and his eyes go very wide.

'Peggy,' he breathes.

Something happens.

Everything inside you goes still, and purely on reflex you take his face in your hands. He smiles and says, 'Peggy Carter,' and you snap his neck.

Natasha has to drag you away, almost; you can't focus, you're nauseous, and when she takes you to the nearest alley you fall on your hands and knees and throw up. You're shaking. Natasha holds your hair and strokes the back of your neck.

'What is it?' she asks, too gently to really mean it. You know how she is: hard and cold, during a mission. There is no place for mercy in your line of work, between the two of you, and she needs you calm and professional. You always know when she's lying, and she's lying now when she pitches her voice to be soothing: 'What's wrong? Tell me what's wrong.'

'I know him,' you choke out, too thrown to really register the language you're speaking, and your head is killing you, you feel — you remember — Natasha is still touching you, and you remember rain and sketches drawn in pencil — 'I know Howard Stark, how do I _know_ him?'

You have a name.

It's at the tip of your tongue, flying through a German air raid with a civilian pilot and a man braver than anyone you've met before, driving fast across an airstrip in the mountains, the red dress you wanted to wear to the Stork Club but you never did go, did you, it would be too much to go there and wait like a mourning widow, like a child in love with an idea.

It's at the tip of your tongue, and then you pass out.

~

You wake up, cold and naked and shaking.

~

Coming out of the cryostasis chamber feels like dying and being born, over and over. They blindfold you to shield your eyes from the too-harsh light, and gentle hands help you up, and there is a voice in your ear murmuring, 'It's okay, it's okay, it'll be all right, here we go.' You take tentative steps like a newborn pony, like you're learning to walk all over again. You're naked, but no one dares touch you in an untoward way, even though half of the scientists and handlers are men.

For the next day you're shaking, your hands and feet tingling uncomfortably as your body temperature slowly adjusts. You're touchy. But the scientists know you're volatile, right after you wake up, and so they treat you well. They let you flex your left arm, slow and hyperfocused, relearning the pull of artificial muscles. They let you sleep, and after two days the mental implantation during sensory deprivation starts, and you remember who you are, you remember who you're loyal to. You remember your reasons; you believe.

~

On the second day you hear one of the scientists humming a tune under her breath. She looks young, but you've seen yourself in a mirror: you look young as well, but know in your bones, in your blood, that you're anything but.

You watch as the scientist takes your blood, monitors your temperature, and finally you ask: 'What is it that you sing?'

For a moment, you don't know what language you said it in, and you think it might have been English, because the scientist looks at you with open surprise, and as you watch it transforms into something more, something pained.

She doesn't answer, and you don't repeat the question.

~

Your handler gives you a thick folder. You open it and skim the pages, but you're a fast reader, it all sinks in. Natalia Romanova. One of your own, an exceptionally skilled Russian spy, defected to the US. Intelligence suspects she might have shared some information with her new employers, information which should never have left the Red Room. Every instinct inside you is screaming that this is unacceptable, and your superiors agree. An order is given.

They bring you out of the cold.


End file.
